Liquid crystals are starting to attract attention for applications beyond the display technology. Their high birefringence, softness, and possibility to form complex topological defect structures allow for easy light manipulation in systems ranging from cholesteric lasers to droplet resonators and wave guides. Recent interest in light-induced topological defects and light propagation along the defects stimulated us to develop a customized version of the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method for solving Maxwell's equations on a discrete time and space lattice. Here, we present an overview of our recent simulations, modeling the time-evolution of electromagnetic fields along birefringent structures in nematic liquid crystals, specifically light propagation along nematic defect lines. In the regime of high light intensity beams the modelling approach includes also a light induced modification of local nematic ordering obtained via a qtensor free energy minimization procedure. We show how topological invariants of the nematic and polarization fields combine and also affect the beam intensity profile. Finally, off-axis propagation of beams with respect to the defect lines is considered.

Based on liquid crystal networks we developed ‘smart’ coatings with responsive surface topographies. Either by prepatterning or by the formation of self-organized structures they can be switched on and off in a pre-designed manner. Here we provide an overview of our methods to generate coatings that form surface structures upon the actuation by light. The coating oscillates between a flat surface and a surface with pre-designed 3D micro-patterns by modulating a light source. With recent developments in solid state lighting, light is an attractive trigger medium as it can be integrated in a device for local control or can be used remotely for flood or localized exposure. The basic principle of formation of surface topographies is based on the change of molecular organization in ordered liquid crystal polymer networks. The change in order leads to anisotropic dimensional changes with contraction along the director and expansion to the two perpendicular directions and an increase in volume by the formation of free volume. These two effects work in concert to provide local expansion and contraction in the coating steered by the local direction of molecular orientation. The surface deformation, expressed as the height difference between the activated regions and the non-activated regions divided by the initial film thickness, is of the order of 20%. Switching occurs immediately when the light is switched ‘on’ and ‘off’ and takes several tens of seconds.

We present here our results on using liquid crystals in experiments with nonclassical light sources: (1) single-photon sources exhibiting antibunching (separation of all photons in time), which are key components for secure quantum communication systems, and (2) entangled photon source with photons exhibiting quantum interference in a Hong-Ou- Mandel interferometer. In the first part, cholesteric liquid crystal hosts were used to create definite circular polarization of antibunched photons emitted by nanocrystal quantum dots. If the photon has unknown polarization, filtering it through a polarizer to produce the desired polarization for quantum key distribution with bits based on polarization states of photons will reduce by half the efficiency of a quantum cryptography system. In the first part, we also provide our results on observation of a circular polarized microcavity resonance in nanocrystal quantum dot fluorescence in a 1-D chiral photonic bandgap cholesteric liquid crystal microcavity. In the second part of this paper with indistinguishable, time-entangled photons, we demonstrate our experimental results on simulating quantum-mechanical barrier tunnelling phenomena. A Hong-Ou-Mandel dip (quantum interference effect) is shifted when a phase change was introduced on the way of one of entangled photons in pair (one arm of the interferometer) by inserting in this arm an electrically controlled planar-aligned nematic liquid crystal layer between two prisms in the conditions close to a frustrated total internal reflection. By applying different AC-voltages to the planar-aligned nematic layer and changing its refractive index, we can obtain various conditions for incident photon propagation – from total reflection to total transmission. Measuring changes of tunnelling times of photon through this structure with femtosecond resolution permitted us to answer some unresolved questions in quantum-mechanical barrier tunnelling phenomena.

A brief overview of recent research and developments in our laboratory toward the fabrication and application of photoresponsive cholesteric liquid crystals, microshells and microdroplets, and blue phase is presented here. We have designed and synthesized a variety of light-driven chiral molecular switches and doped into achiral nematic liquid crystals hosts to obtain photoresponsive cholesteric liquid crystals and blue phase. By irradiation with light of suitable wavelengths, it has been possible to tune the reflection color of cholesteric liquid crystals and blue phase over a wide range across the visible spectrum. By doping upconversion nanoparticles into photoresponsive cholesteric liquid crystals, the reflection color tuning has been accomplished by irradiation with near infrared light. Moreover, cholesteric microshells have been fabricated which exhibit omnidirectional lasing. Similarly, cholesteric microdroplets have been found to display omnidirectional selective reflection and photonic cross communication. Wide-range non-mechanical beam steering has been demonstrated in a phoresponsive cholesteric liquid crystal sample. This short summary of our recent research work shows that the century old fascinating cholesteric liquid crystals have diverse opportunities to offer.

We present a method to fabricate a thin film color filter based on a mixture of photo-polymerizable liquid crystal and chiral dopant. A chiral nematic liquid crystal layer reflects light for a certain wavelength interval Δλ (= Δn.P) with the period and Δn the birefringence of the liquid crystal. The reflection band is determined by the chiral dopant concentration. The bandwidth is limited to 80nm and the reflectance is at most 50% for unpolarized incident light. The thin color filter is interesting for innovative applications like polarizer-free reflective displays, polarization-independent devices, stealth technologies, or smart switchable reflective windows to control solar light and heat. The reflected light has strong color saturation without absorption because of the sharp band edges. A thin film polarizer is developed by using a mixture of photo-polymerizable liquid crystal and color-neutral dye. The fabricated thin film absorbs light that is polarized parallel to the c axis of the LC. The obtained polarization ratio is 80% for a film of only 12 μm. The thin film polarizer and the color filter feature excellent film characteristics without domains and can be detached from the substrate which is useful for e.g. flexible substrates.

Polymer-stabilized blue-phase liquid crystal (PS-BPLC) has become an increasingly important technology trend for information display and photonic applications. BPLC exhibits several attractive features, such as reasonably wide temperature range, submillisecond gray-to-gray response time, no need for alignment layer, optically isotropic voltageoff state, and large cell gap tolerance when an in-plane switching (IPS) cell is employed. However, some bottlenecks such as high operation voltage, relatively low transmittance, and noticeable hysteresis and prolonged response time at high field region for IPS mode, still remain to be overcome before widespread application of BPLC can be realized. To reduce operation voltage, both new BPLC materials and new device structures have been investigated. In this paper, we demonstrate the stabilization a photopolymer-embedded blue phase liquid crystal precursor using a linearly polarized UV light for first time. When the UV polarization axis is perpendicular to the stripe electrodes of an IPS cell, anisotropic polymer networks are formed through the linear photo-polymerization process and the electrostriction effect is suppressed. As a result, the measured hysteresis is dramatically reduced from 6.95% to 0.36% and the response time shortened by ~2X compared to unpolarized UV exposure. To induce larger anisotropy in polymer networks for mitigating the electrostriction effect, high-intensity linearly polarized UV exposure is preferred. It is foreseeable this method will guide future BPLC device and material development as well as manufacturing process. The dawn of BPLCD is near.

We have investigated a new form of polymer dispersed liquid crystals (PDLC) electro-optical films comprised of blue phase liquid crystal and polymer prepared by the solvent evaporation method. In this method, polymer dispersed blue phase (PDBP) films, which were laminated between two indium-tin-oxidecoated conductive substrates, demonstrated two switching modes between light scattering and transparent states in response to an applied electric field across the film. The electro-optical properties of PDBP liquid crystals can be altered by changing the concentrations of liquid crystal and polymer. The compositions, film preparations, physical and morphological behaviors, and electro-optical properties of PDBP films are described.

Cholesteric liquid crystals (CLC) with a specific confinement conditions are known to form bubble domain (BD) texture. We have developed the CLC BD texture stabilized with a small amount of polymer. CLC bubbles of a BD texture self-assemble into domains with a hexagonal ordering and optically perform as a diffraction grating. By stabilization of the BD texture with a polymer we have improved optical quality of the diffractive CLC layer and have increased its mechanical stability. We discuss details about samples preparation, Bragg diffraction, electro-optical performance and present results of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) morphological study of the polymer network formed in the bulk of the diffractive liquid crystal layer.

In this paper we show two approaches to fabricate photonic channels on different substrate technology platforms, in particular silicon and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), for flexible photonic integrated circuits. The electro-optic effect and nonlinear optical properties of liquid crystals (LC) allow the realization of low cost and low energy consumption optoelectronic devices operating at both visible and near-infrared wavelengths. High extinction ratio and large tuning range guided wave devices will be presented to be used for both optofluidic and datacom applications, in which both low realization costs and low power consumption are key features. In particular we will show our recent results on polarization independent light propagation in waveguides whose core consists of LC infiltrated in PDMS channels (LC:PDMS waveguides) fully compatible with optofluidic and lab-on-chip microsystems.

Raytheon’s innovative active short wave infrared (SWIR) imager uses Vescent Photonic’s emerging liquid crystal waveguide (LCWG) technology to continuously steer the illumination laser beam over the imager field of view (FOV). This approach instantly illuminates a very small fraction of the FOV, which significantly reduces the laser power compared to flash illumination. This reduced laser power directly leads to a reduction in the size, weight and power (SWaP) of the laser. The reduction in laser power reduces the input power and thermal rejection, which leads to additional reduction in the SWaP of the power supplies and thermal control. The high-speed steering capability of the LCWG enables the imager’s SWaP reduction. The SWaP reduction is possible using either global or rolling shutter detectors. In both cases, the LCWG steers the laser beam over the entire FOV while the detector is integrating. For a rolling shutter detector, the LCWG synchronizes the steering with the rolling shutter to illuminate only regions currently integrating. Raytheon’s approach enables low SWaP active SWIR imagers without compromising image quality. This paper presents the results of Raytheon’s active SWIR imager demonstration including steering control and synchronization with the detector integration.

Liquid crystals (LC) have widespread applications for amplitude modulation (e.g. flat panel displays) and phase modulation (e.g. beam steering). For phase modulation, a 2π phase modulo is required. To extend the electro-optic application into infrared region (MWIR and LWIR), several key technical challenges have to be overcome: 1. low absorption loss, 2. high birefringence, 3. low operation voltage, and 4. fast response time. After three decades of extensive development, an increasing number of IR devices adopting LC technology have been demonstrated, such as liquid crystal waveguide, laser beam steering at 1.55μm and 10.6 μm, spatial light modulator in the MWIR (3~5μm) band, dynamic scene projectors for infrared seekers in the LWIR (8~12μm) band. However, several fundamental molecular vibration bands and overtones exist in the MWIR and LWIR regions, which contribute to high absorption coefficient and hinder its widespread application. Therefore, the inherent absorption loss becomes a major concern for IR devices. To suppress IR absorption, several approaches have been investigated: 1) Employing thin cell gap by choosing a high birefringence liquid crystal mixture; 2) Shifting the absorption bands outside the spectral region of interest by deuteration, fluorination and chlorination; 3) Reducing the overlap vibration bands by using shorter alkyl chain compounds. In this paper, we report some chlorinated LC compounds and mixtures with a low absorption loss in the near infrared and MWIR regions. To achieve fast response time, we have demonstrated a polymer network liquid crystal with 2π phase change at MWIR and response time less than 5 ms.

We have constructed and characterized THz phase shifters based on liquid crystals (LCs) with graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and indium-tin-oxide nanowhiskers (ITO NWhs) as transparent conducting electrodes. A graphene-based phase shifter can achieve a phase shift of π/2 at 1.0 THz with the operating voltage of ~2.2 V (rms) as opposed to ~ 5.6 V (rms) for ITO-NWhs-based phase shifter in previous work. On the other hand, 2π phase shift at 1.0 THz was achieved in an ITO-NWhs-based phase shifter with a multi-sandwiched structure by applying ~2.6 V (rms). The low operation voltage of both two kinds of phase shifters imply compatibility of both type of devices with thin-film transistor (TFT) and complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technologies. The experimental results of phase shifters are in good agreement with the theoretical predictions.

Drops or shells of a planar-aligned short-pitch cholesteric liquid crystal exhibit unique optical properties due to the combination of Bragg reflection in the cholesteric helix and a radial orientation of the helix axis. If such a droplet is illuminated from above, light is reflected into a continuous set of cones, the opening angles of which depend on where on the droplet the light hits its surface. For the wavelength that fulfills the Bragg condition the reflection is dramatically enhanced, yielding the light cones colored. A photonic cross communication scheme arises for certain angles, reflecting light back to the observer from a different droplet than the one originally illuminated. This gives rise to an intricate pattern of colored and circularly polarized spots. A number of interesting applications may be developed based on this pattern, e.g. in identification and authentication devices. We have carried out a detailed spectrophotometric analysis of the patterns, localized to individual spot maxima. A quantitative comparison between the measured spectra and the reflection wavelength expected from a model for the pattern generation allows us to conclude that the droplets are in fact not spherical but slightly ellipsoidal.

We demonstrate nanosecond electro-optic switching in the nematic and isotropic phases of two nematic materials, one with a negative dielectric anisotropy (HNG715600-100) and another with a positive dielectric anisotropy (8CB). In both cases, the effect is caused by the nanosecond electric modification of the order parameter (NEMOP). In NEMOP effect, the electric field is applied in such a way that the director alignment is not distorted. The NEMOP effects in the nematic phases are compared to the Kerr effects of the isotropic phases of the same two materials. Although the amplitudes of NEMOP and Kerr effects are comparable, we observe differences in temperature dependencies. We also observe that the field-induced Kerr birefringence in the isotropic phases does not follow the expected quadratic dependence on the applied field. Namely, it grows slower in the dielectrically negative material and faster in the dielectrically positive material.

We propose a method for fast bistable switching of chiral-nematic liquid crystals. Fast switching from the focal conic to the planar state can be achieved by applying an in-plane electric field for a short period of time. The in-plane field induces a transient state, which relaxes rapidly to the initial planar state. We demonstrate that the switching time from the focal conic to the planar state could be reduced from 150 to 5 ms by applying an in-plane field instead of a vertical field. We achieved a total response time of less than 10 ms. The proposed device is applicable to a reflective display and to other optical switching devices requiring both fast response time and low power consumption.

We show how highly chromatic Multi-Twist Retarder (MTR) films can be used to create a single-film color filter wherein the color may be selected only by the MTR orientation angle. By this approach, we can create multi- color images with just an MTR between polarizers. We study the design method and limits of the available color gamut possibilities in this approach, and experimentally demonstrate several designs of continuous and discrete patterns. This technique may be useful in art, displays, microscopy, and remote sensing.

Liquid crystal (LC) lenses offer novel opportunities for applications of ophthalmic lenses, camera modules, pico projectors, endoscopes, and optical zoom systems owing to electrically tunable lens power. Nevertheless, the tunable lens power and the aperture size of LC lenses are limited by the optical phase resulting from limit birefringence of LC materials. Recently, we developed a liquid crystal and polymer composite film (LCPCF) as a separation layer and an alignment layer for a multi-layered structure of LC lenses in order to enlarge the polarization-independent optical phase modulation. However, the physical properties and mechanical properties of the LCPCF are not clearly investigated. In this paper, we show the mechanical and physical properties of the LCPCF. The anchoring energy of the LCPCF is comparable with the standard rubbing-induced alignment layer. The transmission efficiency is around 97% neglecting the Fresnel reflection. The surface roughness is under 2 nm by using AFM scanning. The bending strength test indicates that the LCPCF can hold the LC material with reasonable deformation. We believe this study provides a deeper insight to the LC lens structure embedded with LCPCF.

In this study, we demonstrated an electrically tunable lens coupler for both variable optical attenuation (VOA) and polarization selection. This coupler consists of a liquid crystal (LC) lens sandwiched between two GRIN lens. A GRIN lens is used to couple the light into the single mode fiber, and a LC lens is used to electrically manipulate the beam size of light. It is known that the lens power of a LC lens is tunable with high polarization sensitivity. Then, as the applied voltage on the LC lens is zero, the incident light is focused due to GRIN lens and coupled into the fiber. On the other hand, the beam size of the transformed e-ray becomes larger because the lens power of a LC lens for the e-ray decreases with the increase of the applied voltage. This results in the decrease of the coupling efficiency, and the optical power coupled into the fiber is smaller. This lens coupler for the e-ray functions as a VOA due to a continuous optical attenuation. On the contrary, the lens power of this LC lens for the o-ray does not vary because of optical anisotropy of the LC layer, and then the coupling efficiency for the o-ray remains high. For an arbitrary polarized incidence, this tunable lens coupler acts as a broadband polarizer for the fiber systems. The polarization dependent loss is larger than 30 dB and the switching time is around 1 second.

Doped liquid crystals, as super-fast refresh holographic media, are very useful in holographic 3D video display because of their extraordinarily high optical nonlinearity arising from laser-induced director axis reorientation. We obtained real-time dynamic holographic display with holographic response time under an order of a microsecond using the super-fast-response liquid crystal films. The hologram formation time and self-erasable time can both reach ~ 1 ms in this film. Holographic video display was realized using them without any cross talk between the holograms. In this paper, the mechanism of real-time hologram recording and self-erasure will be presented based on light-induced liquid crystal molecular reorientation in the films.

A polarized liquid crystal (LC) lens composed of a LC layers as a polarization switch and a liquid crystal and polymer composites lens (LCPC lens) is demonstrated with electrically switching (ES) mode and optically rewritten (ORW) mode. The lens power of LCPC lens is related to a polarization state of light modulated by the LC layer whose orientations are manipulated either electrically or optically. As a result, the LC lens is not only electrically switchable, but also optically rewritable. Each mode, ES mode or ORW mode, exhibits two discrete lens powers (-1.39 Diopter and +0.7 Diopter). The demonstrated aperture size is 10 mm. The detail optical mechanism is also discussed. The Modulation Transfer Function (so-called MTF) of the lens is measured as well. In addition, the image performance and the dispersion of the LC lens are investigated. Such a polarized LC lens could be a special switch in optical systems due to dual operation modes.

We demonstrate fast gray-to-gray (GTG) switching of a hybrid-aligned liquid crystal cell by applying both vertical and inplane electric fields to liquid crystals (LCs) using a four-terminal electrode structure. The LCs are switched to the bright state through downward tilting and twist deformation initiated by applying an in-plane electric field, whereas they are switched back to the initial dark state through optically hidden relaxation initiated by applying a vertical electric field for a short duration. The top electrode in the proposed device is grounded, which requires a much higher voltage to be applied for in-plane rotation of LCs. Thus, ultrafast turn-on switching of the device is achieved, whereas the turn-off switching of the proposed device is independent of the elastic constants and the viscosity of the LCs so that fast turn-off switching can be achieved. We experimentally obtained a total response time of 0.75 ms. Furthermore, fast GTG response within 3 ms could be achieved.

Recently, a transparent display has got much attention as one of the next generation display devices. Especially, active studies on a transparent display using organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) are in progress. However, since it is not possible to obtain black color using a transparent OLED, it suffers from poor visibility. This inevitable problem can be solved by using a light shutter. Light shutter technology can be divided into two types; light absorption and scattering. However, a light shutter based on light absorption cannot block the background image perfectly and a light shutter based on light scattering cannot provide black color. In this work we demonstrate a light shutter using two liquid crystal (LC) layers, a light absorption layer and a light scattering layer. To realize a light absorption layer and a light scattering layer, we use the planar state of a dye-doped chiral nematic LC (CNLC) cell and the focal-conic state of a long-pitch CNLC cell, respectively. The proposed light shutter device can block the background image perfectly and show black color. We expect that the proposed light shutter can increase the visibility of a transparent display.

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Journal of Applied Remote SensingJournal of Astronomical Telescopes Instruments and SystemsJournal of Biomedical OpticsJournal of Electronic ImagingJournal of Medical ImagingJournal of Micro/Nanolithography, MEMS, and MOEMSJournal of NanophotonicsJournal of Photonics for EnergyNeurophotonicsOptical EngineeringSPIE Reviews